Page 72 of Obsidian Throne

If I had thought Evander’s eyes were incensed before, they were pure, unadulterated murder now.

“I’ll go,” I told her, then turned to Evander. “I’m not leaving you. And she’s right, he has more to lose by hurting me than he stands to gain.”

His hands flexed around his sword, and Ava shot a look at the man holding me. The soldier dragged his blade along my neck in a jagged pattern, and I squeezed my eyes shut against the pain.

“Stop,” Evander said. “I’ll do it.”

I opened my eyes to see him staring into them, but it wasn’t with the resignation I was expecting to see. He was still enraged. Defiant.

“Excellent,” Ava said. “Though, there is one more thing.”

She turned to look directly at me. “You should have thought twice before threatening me.”

I thought about my threat, if she ever so much as breathed in Evander’s direction again. And I knew, I knew what she was going to say before she even opened her mouth.

“Samu, I think forty lashes should do it.”

My lips parted in a fury more intense than anything I had ever felt.

“Do not touch him,” I snarled, not even caring when the bobbing of my throat made the knife cut a little deeper.

Even as the blood trickled down my neck, I made myself a promise.

Regardless of what else happened today, I would kill her for this.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

ROWAN

Evander took one look at me, at the blood pooling along my collarbone, and nodded. Like the decision was obvious.

Tears started spilling down my face in truth, but I blinked them away. He gave me a single, meaningful look before he sheathed his swords and unbuckled his double baldric.

Then he walked toward a tree, calmly unbuttoning his jacket next.

His men moved forward, but Evander held out his hand again. “I ordered you to stand down. Do not make me say it again.”

Kirill looked angrier than I had ever seen him, but he reluctantly lowered his weapon.

“You heard His Grace,” he told the men.

They also looked furious, but they obeyed. And I knew they hated Ava, but they hated me as well. This was my fault. He was doing this for me.

Because of me.

I watched helplessly as Samu handed Ava a whip. As Evander carefully laid his swords against the ground. As he pulled off first his jacket, then his shirt, hanging them neatly on a branch. As he held his hands out to brace himself against the trunk of the tree.

My heartbeat roared in my ears, my lungs scrambling for short, panicked puffs of air.

But my father hadn’t raised me to panic. And Evander hadn’t chosen that tree at random. It forced Ava’s attention away from me.

Everyone’s attention, in fact.

With slow, cautious movements, I reached my hand into my pocket, the one that was always left open for easy access to my dagger.

Crack.

Evander didn’t even flinch as the first lash sliced across his back. Blood poured from the wound, and it took every ounce of self-control I never knew I possessed not to scream, not to lunge for my dagger, not to do anything that might bring attention to me.